Several
of our members made the trip to the hill country over Memorial Day
weekend.The following
is a picture story from Todd Nelson on his “misadventures” on
the trail called Border Collie.

Or should that be Misadventures?!
J

Entering
the obstacle known as the corkscrew…it’s a little tight

Working
my way through the rock walls…I have just taken the paint off of
the rear right corner…

The
Saga…..I mean Adventure….ContinuesJ

Looking at this picture now, I’m really not
sure why my spotterchose this line that went straight up the wall…now I’m
pinched.Notice that
everyone, including myself, is staring at the left rear tire

Well,
now we know the axles are gone, so I’m on the cable winching out
of the hole… trouble
is, the axle isn’t cooperating. This is what’s known as the 35C
walk-out.

Here’s
the axle, coming out to say “hi.” The tire was between the
Jeep and the rock wall, so we aired down the tire enough to beat
the tire back into the tube so we could winch out of the hole.

Nature's
Jack StandsJ

Getting
the Jeep into a position to work on it presented a challenge since
jack stands are hard to come by in the woods. So we laid the tires
on their sides under the axles, placed logs/rocks across the
wheels to disperse the load, and lowered the Jeep onto them so
that we could go to work without having to depend on a high-lift
jack for support.

A
Look At The Culprits..J

This
trail fix took a lot longer thanks to a chewed carrier and mangled
axle stubs. The carrier had to be removed from the differential
housing entirely and beaten on for about 2.5 hours before the
locker would spit the c-clips and allow us to start the mending
process.

Here
I am under the Jeep rebuilding the locker after we force-fixed (BFH
+ chisel) the carrier and installed the spare axles. Thankfully,
and due to the help of a lot of new friends, I was able to drive
the Jeep out under its own power. 100 yards down the trail,
however, this badly shaken driver drove right into a rock
out-cropping and blew a perfectly good tire…salt on the wound…